BCA Europe

"BCA, Europes largest vehicle remarketing company has a history stretching back nearly 60 years. Its main business in the UK is widely known as British Car Auctions. The company constantly introduces innovative services and technologies which, coupled with unsurpassed customer service, lead to many high profile automotive industry awards.

 

BCA handles over a million vehicles each year – cars, vans, trucks, plant and equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, buses, coaches, caravans, and even classic and historic vehicles. Its 2100 UK staff deliver a wide range of services, including physical auctions at 33 centres in 9 countries covering mainland Europe and the UK.

 

BCA’s on-line services, such as Europe-wide real-time vehicle auction systems and automotive market and pricing information, lead the industry and create a requirement for always-available, secure network communications. Continuous firewall protection is of vital importance, not only for BCA’s own pan-European financial reporting systems, but also for all the clients who depend on its electronic services.

 

High availability with 24–7 protection

BCA asked Centric Networks to plan and implement a high availability solution to replace the existing single firewall and ensure 24–7 access to all its business-critical applications and 20-plus hosted servers.

 

Centric Networks specified installation of two Nokia IP380 security appliances with IPSO 3.7.1, running Check Point Next Generation software with Application Intelligence, for which a Check Point specialist from Westcon (UK) provided licensing expertise.

 

New Check Point utilities enabled the complex rule base and Check Point objects database to be exported from the existing management server to a new server, instead of the rule base having to be built from scratch. The new Nokia units were tested in a live environment to confirm correct operation, with scrupulous checking of the results before final migration to the high availability firewall pair.

 

BCA’s Computer Services IT Manager, Neil Parker, highlights the success of the new firewall:
"Centric Networks have given us a solution which prevents service interruptions due to a failed firewall. If a problem does occur with one firewall, engineers now have more time in which to correctly diagnose, rectify and prevent its reoccurrence, without BCA incurring any revenue loss. Centric Networks provide full 24-7 management of the high availability firewalls as well as the connections and firewalls in all nine European countries."

 

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